Vivariums In The Mist is a small New York based business dedicated to offering custom planted vivarium & terrarium displays, supplies and live plants.
We offer established planted vivariums (available in our NY Showroom), or we will work with you to design a habitat to meet your specific requirements, species kept and desired size/brands.
Our story
Circa 1986, gotta love those short shorts!!!
Catching Bullfrogs – Good old days!
First pond, no idea why there is a tomato plant growing next to it.
How it all began…
My love for frogs (really all herps) and plants started during camping trips at a young age. Every summer my family would head upstate to the picturesque Catskill Mountains of New York, which in essence was a weeklong herp fielding trip for me and my younger brother. If it moved we tried to catch it!
You name it we caught it – turtles, snakes, newts, all types of frogs, fish and so on. Those were fun and different times. While I wouldn’t necessarily recommend doing this and there are certainly many laws in place these days, we brought anything and everything home with us that we were allowed to.
Collecting herps led to my first pond, which was nothing more than a kiddy pool buried in the ground. However, this quickly graduated to a small custom cement pond in an enclosed area that would eventually increase in size to almost the full width of our backyard.
Before I knew it, there were frogs and turtles thriving and breeding every year in our little oasis. I am confident that a big factor in our success was the fact that we always made every effort to match the natural flora that we observed upstate in order to make our residents feel at home.
I guess I was a bit “weird”, being a kid from Queens, NY. How many kids did you know that felt just as home on the basketball court as at the local nursery? My windowsills were full of African Violets and countless other plants. It was only a natural progression to get involved in terrarium and vivarium building. These little mini eco-systems fascinated me to no end.
After high school, my first real job was at the local Petland Discounts. Eventually I moved into HVAC and appliance repair (skills which I still use today, just in vivarium building). After almost 10 years in that field, a couple of serious shoulder injuries forced me to rethink things and change careers. Not really having any idea what I wanted to do or even what I could actually do I responded to an ad from a NY based pet product manufacturer, and just like that I was back in the pet field.
Now, instead of selling pet products, I was actually developing new aquarium and reptile products that would eventually hit the market. I’ve been able to put all those years of experience to good use. In fact, one of the biggest highlights was coming up with the concepts and/or developing new reptile products that went on to win awards in the New Reptile Product category at the Global Pet Expo, the biggest pet industry trade show in the country.
One of my biggest thrills along the way has been being published in some of the very magazines I read growing up. The first article I wrote appeared in Tropical Fish Hobbyist magazine back in 2007 on Cherry Shrimp. A framed copy of that magazine’s cover is still proudly displayed on my desk at work. Over the years, I have written several other articles on both aquarium and reptile topics that appeared in TFH magazine, Aquarium Fish International, Reptiles Magazine, Reptiles USA and even an article for a magazine over in the UK.
One article that you may be familiar with really gave birth to the whole concept of Vivariums In The Mist, and you might have even unknowingly played a role in that! In the December 2012 issue of Reptiles Magazine, appeared an article I wrote entitled – The Great Vivarium Build of 2012.
Following that article I couldn’t believe the amount of support as well as questions that flooded my inbox including requests for custom vivariums. After thinking about it for months and with my wife’s support and encouragement, we decided to give it a go and our side venture, Vivariums In The Mist was born.
Really, it’s just a good excuse to build vivariums and hang out at reptile shows, lol. So if you are looking for a custom vivarium display for your home or office, why not contact us and let us know what you have in mind…
Paul D.